Jeffrey Wells writes about the Florida critics.
“The Florida Film Critics Circle have shown themselves to be just as conformist, regimented and sheep-like as other award-bestowing critics groups, with each of their ’08 winners well within the arena of safety. Best Picture — Slumdog Millionaire. Best Actor — The Wrestler ‘s Mickey Rourke. Best Actress — Frozen River‘s Melissa Leo . Best Supporting Actor — The Dark Knight’s Heath Ledger. Best Foreign Language Film — Let the Right One In. Best Animated Feature — WALL*E. Best Documentary — Man on Wire. Breakout Award — In Bruges director-writer Martin McDonagh.”
Then he writes about the Toronto film critics that awarded the much smaller indie by Kelly Reichardt, “Wendy & Lucy” as the Best Film Of The Year.
“Here’s to the Toronto Film Critics Association for ignoring the Zelig impulse, standing up like men of character and cojones and giving their Best Picture award to Kelly Reichardt‘s Wendy and Lucy. The two runnners-up were Rachel Getting Married and WALL*E. Wendy and Lucy‘s Michelle Williams was named Best Actress, Jonathan Demme was named Best Director for Rachel Getting Married, [and] Rachel‘s Jenny Lumet won for Best Screenplay.”
Sure, it’s great that “Wendy & Lucy” got some love, it’s a fantastic and deserving little film, but we take issue with a few of Wells’ posits.
First off contrarianism for the sake of contrarianism is for 16-year-olds and not something that one should take place in any BEST lists as far as we’re concerned. Secondly, hailing from Toronto, we feel (if we can speak on their behalf), that this is very much in keeping with the Toronto-crits-minded taste and not a contrarian move.
So what if everyone likes “Slumdog Millionaire” and Mickey Rourke for Best Actor. There’s a simple reason why many people feel the same and it’s because they’re damn good and deserving. There’s one thing to say, “hey, these people are deserving and should get some love and recognition too” (we’ve been doing that all year), but it’s another to not vote for something simply because it’s popular and you want to be “original” (frankly, that’s childish). Now we’re not saying that’s what Wells is positing, but it sure seems like he’s suggesting it. Our point is dogging on people for having herd-like taste, especially when those choices are pretty damn good and collectively regarded as such, is silly. What if they all picked, Wells’ (and our) beloved, “Che” would a herds-like choice be OK, then? Just saying…a top 10 is supposed to be about what films you thought were the best/were your favorite, not a time to show off your “original” picks.